HAYWARD — The first new housing project to benefit from the city’s “inclusionary housing” law broke ground Friday.

Nonprofit development firm Eden Housing Inc. is building a 78-unit apartment complex at the corner of Saklan Road and North Lane near West Winton Avenue.

The $26.3 million project, designed exclusively for families who make between $14,000 and $52,000 annually, is being built as a result of a new Hayward law that forces developers to contribute to the city’s affordable housing stock every time they build large tracts of market-rate homes.

As a rooster crowed in the nearby unincorporated area of Mount Eden and small planes from the Hayward Executive Airport flew overhead, several local politicians and community leaders celebrated the new project at a groundbreaking ceremony.

For several decades, the 3-acre site housed a pickle plant. When the new Saklan Family Housing complex is built, it will include nine apartment buildings arranged around three courtyards and a community room for residents.

The project initially received criticism because of the site’s remoteness and proximity to industrial warehouses and the airport. City Manager Jesus Armas, speaking Friday at the event, said the site might “appear to be isolated today” but eventually will form part of a neighborhood that will include a nearby development of 149 single-family houses.

The city’s inclusionary housing law, which took effect in 2004, requires developers building projects of more than 20 homes to make 15 percent of their units affordable to low-income households.

The law was originally designed so that the affordable units could be incorporated into market-rate developments, not built at a separate location.

But the city allowed Dublin-based DeSilva Group, which is building a large tract of houses on the hillside site of the old La Vista Quarry, to help construct an off-site affordable housing complex instead.

DeSilva bought the old pickle plant and gave the site to Hayward-based Eden Housing for $1. DeSilva also demolished the plant, paid for an environmental cleanup on the contaminated site and contributed about

$2.8 million in cash to help Eden Housing build the apartments.

Linda Mandolini, director of Eden Housing, said she hopes to have the project complete by April 2008. Eden uses government grants and public-private partnerships to build and maintain affordable housing projects.

The Saklan project will be Eden’s 23rd housing project in Hayward since the company’s founding in the 1960s, said project manager Katie Lamont. Its 22nd project was the recently completed Sara Conner Court in South Hayward and its 24th will be a 60-unit senior citizen complex and new corporate office in downtown Hayward. Construction on the senior project is scheduled to begin in March.